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tv   The Last Word  MSNBC  November 4, 2013 10:00pm-11:00pm PST

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personally. he hasn't come on the show since he wouldn't answer my questions years ago about the civil rights act. but he may feel compelled to answer questions from his hometown press. if that is the case something borrowed. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews up in new york. let me start with this. tea for two. rand paul refuses to admit it. it's about plagiarism. he has been accused of taking words, large numbers of words, from other sources. he wrote a book but puts his name to the book more than 1300 of them that came from a heritage foundation report.
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it took a search engine to discover this. once discovered, it's the fact he has to defend and refuse he did what he did, take credit for someone else's words. i don't know why he won't and doesn't admit that they took the words and took credit. this is something you learn in high school. why not remember the rules and follow them. if you don't set up the words as borrowed, you're taking credit for them yourselves. that's unacceptable. david corn of mother jones and josh marshall is founder of talking points memo. let's get to the evidence that senator paul has plagiarized. this book, "government bullies" complete with paul's picture and name on the top contains a large section lifted verbatim from a heritage foundation report. the copied second, 1318 words, is by far the most significant instance reported so far of paul borrowing language from other
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published material. well, the website buzzfeed went on to say there is a link to the heritage report in the back of his book but did not say the words were a direct lift. from page 132 of his book, quote, this prosecution also reveals the risks of federalizing criminal law. observers have long warned against allowing the federal government to encroach on the traditional state function of enacting and enforcing laws. claims to enforce foreign laws against foreign and u.s. citizens. these regulations were not made by the u.s. congress or some executive agency but by a foreign government with unfamiliar procedures. every one of those words, every word i just read to you from the first to the last appear in a 2003 case study from the heritage foundation you see on the screen now. just so you can officialize it. these three highlighted pages of the book from buzzfeed show how dense the copied portions are in governor paul's book. i guess it comes down to some kind of strange -- not that
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there was a mistake made and has been made in a number of other cases where words were taken down and used as his by a staffer i assume. he refuses to admit the obvious. this isn't a battle between him and rachel maddow or anyone else. this is a battle between him and evidence that has built up from a search engine that are used in colleges, universities, good schools, to check for plagiarism. he has been caught. why doesn't he admit it? >> you know, i think that's the question here. these things happen all the time. obviously he's one of many politicians who doesn't write his own books and his own speeches. people like you, me, and josh we write our own books and materials. but politicians don't. so he had people cut and paste and put things into books and speeches. all you have to do now is say oops. made a mistake. and we have new protocols in my office, make sure this doesn't happen again and apologize to the people whose work you lifted. it's very easy to do this.
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the fact that he is so stuck in his corner, backed up, shows you i think a lot. when i met rand paul in the past, i found him to be rather prickly. i think he's being super prickly now. he's going to use this to burnish his tea party credentials say look the media is after me. rachel maddow is after me. i'm going to duel with rachel or whoever. and score points that way. >> josh, you're sort of an intellectual putting it lightly. you know how to source. you know how to write a doctorate, a monograph of any kind. you know you use footnotes. they're called footnotes. or put a quote around it and say i got this from a study by the heritage foundation. it wouldn't have hurt him a bit. if he wrote here's what heritage foundation said. sign it up there, no problem. but in this case he put it in his text under his name. he wrote it. he didn't. your thoughts.
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>> it's exactly right. i think david's point is really good. that given the fact that we know very few politicians write their own books, it would be credible for him to say listen, i apologize. i take the blame. i didn't do this myself. a staffer did it. he or she was sloppy and move on. that would be credible because no one -- i don't think anybody thinks that rand paul actually did the research for this book. but there's this bigger issue with rand paul and actually the whole paul family that they've got some real hr problems in the way they run their political offices. i mean, they keep coming up with people who plagiarize on their behalf. you've got the thing with his dad about this decade of news letters that apparently someone else wrote under his name and he never knew about it. >> you mean the racist stuff. >> yeah. even with rand paul there's the earlier book he wrote back in 2011. the guy who ghost wrote that one had this white supremacist history. it's not that i think rand paul is actually going around
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plagiarizing, but he runs a pretty loose operation. it's like if you elected rand paul president, you would want the key job, the key other person in his administration wouldn't be chief of staff or secretary or state or vice president. it'd be the person who prevents him from inadvertently hiring racists and plagiarizers. >> that day had been lifted verbatim from the wikipedia entry for the movie "gatica." let's listen to that. >> from wikipedia. ethan hawke's character, quote, assumes the identity of jerome morrow who had been injured in a car accident leaving him paralyzed. hit it, senator. >> he assumes the identity of jerome morrow. a world class swimming tar with the genetic profile said to be second to none. but he's been paralyzed from a car accident.
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>> this is weird. he's reading wikipedia off the teleprompter. >> remember hit this messenger. when his real enemy is the search engine. >> i think i'm being unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters. i'm not going to put up with people casting aspersions on my character. >> they're like drone missiles. they come looking for you. they've got the words. they've got the -- what do you call it? the parameters. they know where you are. and it seems to me that his problem is he's like pushing off, swatting away what's going to keep coming back at him. the wording used appeared elsewhere earlier. and that's always a problem. >> i just like his defense that he's against people who cast aspersions upon him. plagiarism is bad, senator paul. it's gotten a lot of people in trouble. some people close to you in the past. and it's not a good thing.
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if you're caught plagiarizing under your name, you're fairly aspersed, if that's a word. >> that's a new word. you didn't plagiarize that from anybody. >> no. made that up myself. for him to get high up here shows he doesn't care. he doesn't care about facts, honor, dignity, respect, integrity. this is all about turning it to his political advantage and to attack the people, you know, whether it's the media or whether it's people who are deemed to be progressives. that's what helps the tea party crowd. >> josh, jump in here. was i wrong to too prematurely suggest he's the nominee of the republican party? could this hectare him the way it did against vice president biden years ago. >> i think it does. i think it's a real problem for him. again, there is this larger issue that he doesn't -- something like this happens once
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you say you got a bad egg on staff and you let them go and whatever. it happens again and again. and what i think that suggests to people who follow this stuff closely is he doesn't really care. and that's the kind of thing i think will hurt him. even if people don't think he was actually there on wikipedia cutting and pasting for his speech. but the other thing is the other point is for people that aren't watching that closely, in a republican primary campaign in 2016, if he's saying -- if one of his opponents is saying caught plagiarizing 39 times, he can't come back and say well i didn't plagiarize. i didn't even write the book. it was that guy i hired down from bowling green who was -- that's not going to cut it. >> senator rand paul's appropriated phrases are now being uncovered in all sorts of speeches. this is the lead sentence on an ap article. quote, the ranks of america's poor swelled to almost one in six -- the numbers one in six there -- last year reaching a new high as long-term unemployment left millions of
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americans struggling and out of work. here's senator paul giving a response to president obama. >> under president obama, the ranks of america's poor have swelled to almost one in six people. we are now at an all-time high in long-term unemployment. millions of americans are struggling and out of work. >> when you read that, one in six, the numbers appear. exactly the same way. if you were a criminologist you would say this guy is taking stuff from that guy. this isn't just a coincidence factor here because it would be one in a zillion here for the words to follow the way they have. >> it's clear there's a lot of sloppiness here. my teenage daughters know when you're writing a paper, you don't just lift things off of wikipedia which may not even be true. whoever is doing this cutting and pasting off of ap which is non-stylistic, straightforward.
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but at least my kids know you make a change of a word or two here or there so your teachers don't have a case against you. whoever he's hiring to do speeches -- >> that's why you have a thesaurus. a thesaurus sitting next to your desk. >> chris, you're old school. you have it on your computer now. >> i am old school. >> he's hiring sloppy people. people are not writing good speeches. they're just lifting passages off wikipedia. that also shows you that standards don't seem to be that high in the rand paul universe. >> this is not an exact case of plagiarism, but there's a certain imitation here. senator paul came up with what seemed like a creative way to come back at critics. let's watch and listen to his words and proposal. >> if duelling were legal in kentucky, if they keep it up it would be a duel challenge. >> not even that was original. the duel challenge sounds familiar certainly to me. let's think back.
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>> i wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel. >> josh marshall, i saved that sugar plum for you. it seems to me even when he gets in and wants to show his i'm ticked off here, he's going back what he hear before from zell miller coming back at me at the 2004 convention. this guy is imitating it. what do you make of this? >> i think there's something in the genealogy or something like that. again, copying, people write in your name you don't know about. there's a sloppiness but something beyond sloppiness that i only half jokingly think he inherited from his dad. so i don't know. and i do think this is a problem for him. it's sort of -- it's so flagrant. i mean, how many have we talked about on the show? nine different examples? usually takes one or two to sink a politician. but i think this is a problem
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for him. there's something deeper about it. he's sloppy. he doesn't seem to care that much the kind of people he has working for him or whether they have any ethics or whether they hate black people or whatever it is. >> i don't think cut and paste is going to replace peace and prosperity. thank you so much david corn and josh marshall. coming up, how the romney campaign may have tried to sabotage a chris christie presidential run for 2016. someone dumped their private vetting of christie into the laps or onto the laps of authors, the authors of "double down." that's coming up next. also what election results could tell us. running as a moderate in new jersey while ken cuccinelli is expected to go down bad in purple virginia. will the right learn its lesson or decide cuccinelli wasn't right wing enough. and even with all the problems of the health care rollout, you want the guys giving health care or the one who isn't even trying.
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the republican plan is no plan at all. and ann coulter says it's not the right that's pushing the birther notion. it's someone else. this is "hardball," the place for politics. la's known definitely for its traffic, congestion, for the smog. but there are a lot of people that do ride the bus. and now that the buses are running on natural gas, they don't throw out as much pollution into the air. so i feel good. i feel like i'm doing my part to help out the environment. two weeks. you already went to the doctor? not yet. but i took this new clearblue test. it's like two tests in one. oh, my god. i think i'm gonna cry. [ female announcer ] the new clearblue pregnancy test also estimates how many weeks. weeks estimator. only from clearblue. or is it?
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welcome back to "hardball." the authors of "game change" are out with a new book about the 2012 campaign. it's called "double down" by mark halperin and john
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heilemann. some of the most consequential reporting was on chris christie. who was a v.p. candidate for the romney team. it did not go well. quote, the list of questions beth myers who was heading the search had for christie and his team were extensive and troubling. trenton's response was, in effect, why do we need to give you that piece of information? myers told her team we have to assume if they're not answering it's because the answer is bad. surveying the sum and substance of what the team was finding, ted newton told his colleagues if christie had been in the nomination fight against us we would have destroyed him. he wouldn't be able to vote for governor again. john heilemann joins me now along with howard fineman. congratulations, john. first i've got to deliver this
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funny quote you have in the book from senator john mccain on why he endorsed mitt romney and not rick santorum. quote, remember this forever, the choice in the republican party has come down to the dog on roof guy or the man on dog guy? i'm with the dog on roof guy. you can't beat that stuff. i just bumped into senator mccain and i did tell him that's one of the great lines. now to the serious stuff. mr. heilemann, i've got to jump ahead of the plan here. was getting rid of joe biden and putting hillary clinton on the ticket -- i mean this literally -- a live option. you know what that means. a considered real possibility or was it not? >> well, when we reported the book and it has been confirmed now by a wide variety of people in the obama inner circle is they studied the matter. they said we need to look at all options. the president's political standing is bad. this is in the fall of 2011. that we need to examine this. it would be a dereliction of
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duty to not look. would hillary clinton added make a difference? the answer to that question when they looked at the polling, the answer was no. so it was never considered in the sense that they had -- the initial research proved it wouldn't have moved the needle. >> if you're joe biden -- >> -- looked at a way in they denied always doing before. >> in other words, if you're joe biden, they hung me out to see if i would pass muster with focus groups and polling groups. who by the way did they approve this, the campaign people, to spend money on a poll and focus groups. did they do that for a fact? >> the money was spent by the obama re-elect. >> if you were joe biden how would you react to the fact they tested you? it wasn't loyalty. it was we tested you and you did pretty good so we're going to keep you. >> joe biden was in fact, incredibly sensitive to the rumors that had been around and
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gossip among people for the first two and a half years of the administration. he didn't like that talk even when it was just loose talk in the cable world. i don't believe that until just this last week that he knew that he actually was tested. and i can't imagine that he's taking it particularly well. >> by the way, howard, you were out there with him today. did you see any evidence that he's in love with the president today or he's a little ticked or pouting or anything like that? >> no, i didn't. he was out campaigning for terry mcauliffe in virginia and i went to see the vice president on the campaign trail. it struck me that he didn't mention barack obama. he didn't mention the president of the united states. he didn't mention any accomplishment of the administration. joe biden talked all about his middle class upbringing, how he bonded with terry mcauliffe because he'd been at syracuse and terry grew up there. it was vintage joe biden.
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i couldn't help but think that joe biden i think reading between the lines of john and mark's excellent book and i've read it all, it's fantastic. that i think joe biden was trying to show them how loyal he'd been and what a great relationship he had with the president. there's plenty of evidence of that in here. and yet the president's aides, were behind his back trying to find out whether to dump him or not. i think it's a problem. >> i got a comment to what he's up to. you write in the book that, quote, biden wanted to expand his network while he was campaigning for obama he thought he should meet with new people, stroke some donors, strike up fresh relationships. you seem to be portraying in your reporting here that biden's still in that trajectory of running for president. everyone figures hillary clinton is probably going to run. we don't know for sure. but it seems to me he's going to start making more moves.
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gene mccarthy once said it's easier to run for president than it is to stop running. do you think he's stopped running for president? >> i don't think he knows how to do anything but run for office. he's always kept it on the table. a way of wanting to maintain his political standing in washington. people would write him off as a lame duck. i think if this period of time in this book we report on, he was looking around saying to himself, i don't have a donor network. yo a massive political machine behind me. if i'm going to run for president in four years' time, i need that. the obama people's attitude toward that was this re-election is only about barack obama. you won't have a political future if we don't win. so you need to focus on, there are no side deals here. you need to focus on what's getting the president elected. >> i think he's still running for president. i think he'll decide long before hilly decides.
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mitt romney was asked on meet the press about what you reported. here he is responding to your great reportage. >> i know the vetting people who went through that analysis and put together their report laid everything out, but frankly there wasn't anything they put out that wasn't already part of the public record and hasn't been dealt with by chris christie. there was nothing new there. chris could easily become our nominee and save our party and help get this nation on the right track again. they don't come better than chris christie. >> don't you love leave time. howard knows how this works. by the time you got all that stuff you got about his vetting failures in the book, this guy has seen christie rise in the polls. he seems to be pushing him for president where his staff was dumping on him. how do you explain the dichotomy except for the passage of months between the interviews. >> i think mitt romney and chris
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christie were personally on fine terms. but i think it is the fact as we report in the book with extensive language directly taken from the final vetting report that there were many problems in the so-called public record. things that were in the public record. then most people don't know like the fact christie was a lobbyist at one point for the securities administration when it was headed by bernie madoff. that was a public fact but not widely known. then things about his brother's lawsuit with the s.e.c. things about his household help, his health. and other lobbying clients that christie never answered to the vetter's satisfaction. they put that down. they gave it to romney and said here are the unanswered questions. we need more information if this selection is to go forward. the day after that report, romney pulled the plug. >> i'm not sure yet. howard, does it shock you that he may have overused the expense
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account and spent too much on food and drink at hotels and stuff like that? it doesn't shock me. >> i'll tell you what's amazing though. and it's a tribute to the reporting by my friends here. they also say that the report raised questions for the vetters about christie's relationship with a top female deputy who accompanied him on many of the trips. that's a quote from page 352 of the book a page i'm sure chris christie has memorized at this point. >> john, any further comment on that since you're looking glum. >> no. we reported it in the book. the vetters were concerned about it. it's something that has been raised in the public sphere before. again, low below the radar. but christie has been forced to respond to that publicly in the past. but they were, in fact, concerned about that. >> what page is that, howard? >> 352. >> you can save your money. i'm just kidding.
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it's great. >> the book is fantastic. >> of course it is. heilemann, you never miss. two for two. john heilemann and howard fineman. up next, ann coulter says it's not the right pushing the birther lie. we'll show you who it is. this is "hardball," the place for politics. in the nation, we know how you feel about your car.
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documentation of the president. whether that was fraudulent. the birther king is donald trump, but there are others. >> if the state of hawaii says this is official, he was born in hawaii on this date, here it is, why do you deny that? >> a lot of people do not think it was an authentic certificate. >> you don't still question he was born in the united states, do you? >> i had no idea. >> even at this point? >> i don't know. was there a birth certificate? some people say that was not his birth certificate. i'm saying i don't know. nobody knows. and you don't know either. you're a smart guy. you don't know. >> the president has not produced a birth certificate. he's produced a birth announcement. >> let's revisit some of these things because americans have questions about not only the irs scandal but also about the president's validity. >> was he elected legitimately to the united states? >> i was not in congress to determine that. that was determined before i got here. >> would have been awfully hard to fraudulently file the birth notice of barack obama being
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born in hawaii. that doesn't mean there aren't some other ways to announce that from kenya. the list goes on. >> their issue with the president is not his policies or what he believes or what he has done. their objection, the birthers, is about the legitimacy of our country's first african-american president. they should be called out for it. one poll from earlier this year found that 64%, two-thirds of republicans believe the president is hiding information about his birth. that is scary. up next, what tomorrow's election results in virginia and new jersey will tell us about the 2016 presidential race. and later, republicans aren't even pretending anymore they want to provide people with health insurance. at least democrats are trying. you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. [ male announcer ] there will be more powerful storms. that's why there's new duracell quantum.
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you've seen an extreme faction of the republican party that has shown again and again and again that they're willing to hijack the entire party and the country and the economy and grind product to an absolute halt if they don't get 100% of what they want. >> welcome back to "hardball." that was, of course, president
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obama campaigning. this time with democrat terry mcauliffe out in virginia yesterday. there is no greater example of the civil war in the republican party than the two contests this week in 2013. the race for governor of new jersey and virginia. voters in those states cast their ballots as i said, tomorrow. the frustrations in the republican party can be seen in virginia where democrat terry mcauliffe has had a lead in the polls against ken cuccinelli. cuccinelli's an uncompromising ideologue whose social views are out of step with most virginians according to the polling. but in the deep blue state of new jersey, different story. all signs are pointing to a historic landslide for different kind of republican than cuccinelli. the moderate and respected chris christie. how can two starkly different kind of republicans coexist in today's gop. guy cecil, the group responsible for expanding the democrats majority in the u.s. senate.
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and michelle goldberg is a contributor to the nation. i want to start with cecil. a guy looking across the aisle right now. tell me what it's like to face the possibility that christie could win really big tomorrow and possibly begin a resurgence of establishment republicanism, non-right wing republicanism. >> well, i can tell you in senate races around the country, that hasn't been the case. >> talk about new jersey. don't change the subject. talk about new jersey. what will be the impact if you get 65% or something win by christie and he begins to look like the image of the republican party. is that important or not? >> i think the impact is zero. when you look at what -- >> wait a minute. stop right here. if you're just going to flack, you're of no value to this show. you're telling me a victory in a headline dominating race in new jersey doesn't matter? it just doesn't matter? >> that's exactly what i'm telling you. >> you have no value to this show if you're going to talk like that. that is insane talk.
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>> old on one second. >> let's talk about the victory of mcauliffe in virginia. what is the significance for democrats winning in virginia this time. >> here's why i think these races -- >> no, talk about the virginia race. >> i'll talk about either one. >> you haven't talked about either yet. let's get going here. you're wasting my time with democratic flack. >> if chris christie were the candidate running in any race, they would have impact, but he's not. the people running on the republican ticket are not chris christie. they are tea party conservatives the reason it has no impact is because mitch mcconnell is not chris christie. >> these are primary challengers. yeah. but what about the incumbents. suppose they defeat the challengers. what's that tell you? >> the fact of the matter is that in cases where supposed moderates or establishment republicans won primaries, they went on to lose the general election because the tea party
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pushed them to the right. senator tommy thompson is not being interviewed today. he was supposedly a moderate in wisconsin. why did he lose? because he was against two tea party republicans and -- >> let me just tell you the facts. i'm sorry, guy. john mccain defeated hayworth for the right and he won in the general. orrin hatch did the same in utah. there are countless example of people who have been center right or conservative who knocked off right wing challengers and won. why are you saying stuff that isn't true? >> because they're racing against insuperior democrats. >> okay. so all your candidates are strong candidates this time. >> if you look at the races around the country -- >> so you're going to carry mississippi if that state has a primary challenge. >> no but i wouldn't say they're a competitive. i think we have a chance to win kentucky. place where is there are significant republican primaries.
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>> what is the significance of a chris christie win. >> if you're going to force me, the only thing it helps is it might come down to new york donors who are worried that the republican party is moving too far to the right. and that's why you see mitch mcconnell and others trying to battle -- >> why is christie doing so well in the south carolina polling right now? >> i'm sorry? >> why is christie doing so well in the south carolina primary polling right now. >> because we're a year and a half out from election. i'm sure i guarantee today he would not win the south carolina primary. >> why is he winning now? >> because no one is paying attention. >> let's go to michelle goldberg. this is unfortunate that you come on the show to do this. i want thinking people on the show who give honest answers. by the way, target the question with the answer. don't ignore the question. let's go to michelle here. michelle, i want to talk to you about chris christie and this
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other one. it's a split screen. probably mcauliffe will win. he could win by four or five and that's a big victory in virginia. i think christie will win with 60 or 70. what's it mean when you put those pictures together? >> well, i think we've always known that kind of a charismatic, reasonable seeming center right republican governor is a very popular figure the this country. that's how you win big races. that's how you potentially could win the presidency. >> like ability. >> i think he's a very formidable candidate for 2016. but whether he will kind of represent the republican party is a very different sort of thing. and there you see still see every couple of years we all get on tv and we all say this defeat will it finally break the spell of radical right wing extremism in the republican party? and the answer is now. even after the virginia gubernatorial loss. >> who is the last right wing republican to win the nomination for president? >> well, ronald reagan.
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>> yeah. that hasn't been so successful. >> you said it can't break the strike. >> i think romney was the most moderate of all republicans last time. he wasn't the most radical. and george w. was not a right winger or dole or mccain. i don't think there's been a run of right wingers winning the nomination. >> no, but winning senate races. i think you'll continue to see that. what happens is usually the money and the establishment triumphs in the campaigns. >> quickly, what's the biggest headline virginia or new jersey tomorrow? what's the biggest headline nationwide? >> i think virginia just because new jersey was predictable. the republicans losing a state like virginia is much more of a man bites dog kind of story. >> thank you guy cecil and michelle goldberg. don't forget election day is tomorrow. polls close very early 7:00 eastern time. get there early. "hardball" will be quick with the results. we'll have the results here and the exit polling analysis. we'll have them, probably have a
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final prediction, final results by 8:00. up next, the rollout of president obama's health care plan has had problems, but at least the democrats are trying. they've got a plan. the republicans don't. never forget that difference. and this is "hardball," the place for politics. ooh, homemade soup! yeah... [ male announcer ] campbell's homestyle soup with farm grown veggies. just like yours. huh. [ male announcer ] and roasted white meat chicken. just like yours. [ male announcer ] you'll think it's homemade. i love this show. [ male announcer ] try campbell's homestyle soup. [ male announcer ] you'll think it's homemade. i love this show. if yand you're talking toevere rheuyour rheumatologistike me, about trying or adding a biologic. this is humira, adalimumab. this is humira working to help relieve my pain. this is humira helping me through the twists and turns. this is humira helping to protect my joints from further damage. doctors have been prescribing humira for over ten years. humira works by targeting and helping to block
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a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. for many adults, humira is proven to help relieve pain and stop further joint damage. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal events, such as infections, lymphoma, or other types of cancer, have happened. blood, liver and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure have occurred. before starting humira , your doctor should test you for tb. ask your doctor if you live in or have been to a region where certain fungal infections are common. tell your doctor if you have had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have symptoms such as fever, fatigue, cough, or sores. you should not start humira if you have any kind of infection. ask your doctor if humira can work for you. this is humira at work. one other race we'll be watching tomorrow is the special republican primary in alabama's first congressional district.
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it pits an establishment candidate backed by the u.s. chamber of commerce against a tea party birther. attorney bradley byrne who's a former office holder who is pro business and says president obama was born here in the united states. wow. and while the more conservative dean young sings the praises of ted cruz, says homosexuality is always wrong and says the president is from kenya. this race is emblematic of the struggle within the republican party even down there. "hardball" back after this. when does your work end? does it end after you've expanded your business? after your company's gone public?
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what are you going to do about the approximately 17 million children with
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pre-existing conditions who can no longer be denied health insurance coverage? you want to go back, you want to say you are no longer covered any longer. you going to tell the parents of those kids? which one of you is going to stand up and tell the parents of those children the game is over, sorry. that was just a phase. >> we're back. that was bill pascrell of new jersey last week criticizing his republican colleagues for their fixation of killing the affordable care act. as he pointed out in that clip you just saw, the gop has been blinded by an obsession to destroy the president's health care law. when it comes to an alternative, they have none. despite its rollout problems, it's my view that the president and the democrats at least want to help americans get health care. republicans aren't even trying, aren't even saying they're trying. as pulitzer prize winner columnist notes yesterday, the gop's kill obama care mantra is politics at its worst. quote, so to those republicans protesting obama care, you're
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right there are appalling problems with the website, but they will be fixed. likewise, your when he said everyone could keep their insurance plan. president obama misled voters when he said that everyone could keep their insurance plan because that's now manifestly not true, although they will be able to get new and better plans, sometimes for less money, but how about showing empathy also for a far larger and more desperate group, the nearly 50 million americans without insurance who will play health
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let me ask you, joy, what is missing in mainstream journalism that all it can do is involve itself with the screw-ups of the rollout? now, that's news. there's no doubt it's front-page news, but there needs to be, it seems to me, some context. one party's trying something, the other party's not. and yet, the other party gets quoted as if they're somehow referees in a game in which, well, they're actually playing in the game. they're not. they are not competing to provide a better health care plan. what are they? i don't know what they are, but they're standing on the sidelines chuckling, enjoying every mishap without any requirement on their part to say, you know, we would have done this. they haven't done it. >> no, and chris, i think you're absolutely right. as long as the story is going to be whether or not, you know, journalists can logon to the website, who don't need insurance, by the way, who already have insurance, as long as that's the narrative, i think republicans can get away with precisely that, because what the republican party has been relentlessly saying through 40-something votes in the house now is we have to repale -- >> and 50 years. >> and for 50 years, but what they're saying currently is we have to repeal and replace the affordable care act, but necessary never go to the next step, which is replace it with what? republicans offered no alternative during the whole
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year-long storm over whether we were going to pass health care reform. there was not a single, concrete proposal other than vague things about buying across state lines, because republicans don't want to admit that the answer to the question you asked, which is what are they going to do, what would they do for the 40 to 50 million americans who can't afford health insurance, the answer to that is nothing. and you have to understand that people who don't have health insurance don't have it because they either have a job that's part-time or that pays low wages and doesn't pay them enough to give them health insurance, remember they're in the bubble, working class people who are working hard but simply can't afford it or didn't qualify for it or didn't previously qualify for medicaid. fixing that problem has been a 100-year-plus project, but only of one party. that's the problem here. >> aneesh, you worked on this project, mainly in the white house. i want to ask you about something that has nothing to to with work. seems there's a lot of emotion with this issue, and i want you to decipher the emotion of the republicans. i don't think they're upset that the plan's not working. they were hoping it wouldn't
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work. it's the anger that it's being tried. there's some free-floating anger out there that one party has tried to do something that they don't believe should have ever been tried. they do see it, even though it's all market driven and it's the most conservative of plans, the employee mandate, everything about it is heritage foundation from bottom up and romney care from the top. and yet, it really bugs them that the other party is doing something to help the 40 million uninsured and they are not interested in doing that. that's what terrorizes them. your thoughts. >> well, i would -- let me just say a little bit of history on this. it was senator olympia snowe that cast the tie-breaking vote in the senate finance committee, let's remember. >> republican. >> that is the framework. republican, right. so, many of the ideas were negotiated during that time that did have a lot of input from both sides, and if she hadn't made that important and courageous vote, we wouldn't be where we are. and so, there are plenty of folks on both sides of the aisle that want to move forward. the most recent narrative,
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obviously, has been about the 40-some-odd votes to repeal, but i will say this, in the investment community and a bunch of the decreeos and entrepreneurs and innovators i've been dealing with, they're in the same frame of mind that thanks to the high-tech act and the affordable care act, there's never been a better time to be an innovator in health care right now. the opening up of data, shift in payment models towards paying for outcomes. so, these are ideas that are full market that are going to solve problems. >> by the way, when do you think we'll be on the other side of this, the other side of the real problems? when will that be for you guys? >> i know jeff science. i worked with him before -- >> he's in charge now. >> he's put a date out on end of november. i'm very confident we're going to hit that date. jeff has a relentless focus on execution. he will get the job done and i am hopeful this will be a footnote. >> you heard it here. thank you, joy, as always. thank you, aneesh. ♪ [ male announcer ] 1.21 gigawatts.
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leaves open two realities for mr. biden. one, of course, she won't run. i don't think that's going to happen. two, she'll announce rather late in the game, perhaps closer to 2015 than you'd expect for other candidates in the race. that creates a situation for mr. biden. that means about pl biden will need to go first, decide on a run, actually get into a run before getting a definitive statement of intention from secretary clinton. he has to move. he can't wait for her and then jump into the race. it would look terrible. on the other hand, he can't refuse to run until she says she isn't, because as i said, that could be very late in the game, too late for him to make a real run of it. so, here's the scenario -- biden runs for president before hillary clinton makes any announcement, and this could be very interesting and great for "hardball." it could also be fun. and for all those who say biden can't beat hillary, i say it doesn't matter. we don't pick our presidents,
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remember, they pick themselves. all we have to do or get to do is to decide among those who have made that decision to become candidates, and to all those who say joe biden would be humiliated by running against hillary, i would say equal the humiliation by not taking on the test. that's "hardball" for now. thanks for being with us. >> good evening, my friend. thanks for joining us this hour. the last time this voted for governor in texas, this is the way texas voted if you break it down by race. white people in texas voted for the republican in that race by a 40-point margin. african-americans in texas voted for the democrat in that race by a 77-point margin. latinos in texas also voted democratic, overwhelmingly in that governors' race. latinos ro voted for the democrat by a margin of 23 points. of course, in the overall sense, the white population was the largest proportion of the vote overall, so the republican candidate carried the day in